Auto Suggestions are available once you type at least 3 letters. Use up arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+up arrow) and down arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+down arrow) to review and enter to select.

Overview

A history of utopian thinking and a pragmatic manifesto for today, suffused with facts, success stories, and lively anecdotes, and advocating for a universal basic income, a 15-hour workweek, and open borders

Two-thirds of Americans report that they would take two extra weeks of vacation above two extra weeks of salary, and half of all business professionals report that their jobs offer no "meaning or significance." And after working all day at jobs we hate, we buy things we don't need. In UTOPIA FOR REALISTS, Dutch historian and journalist Rutger Bregman reminds us it needn't be this way. A manifesto full of intentionality and pragmatism, Bregman's book centers on three central utopic ideas: a 15-hour workweek, a "universal basic income", no strings attached, and open borders throughout the globe. Though the claims might seem fanciful at first, UTOPIA FOR REALISTS provides numerous examples of successful experiments with "free money", such as Mincome in 1970s Canada, and experiments in giving homeless people a financial foundation. The theory among detractors is that free money will make people be lazy and work less. But in fact, employment is necessary for virtually everyone's happiness.

As for the workweek, global studies show again and again that a shorter workweek contributes to lower stress, lower environmental impact, fewer work mistakes or accidents, lower gender inequality, and lower wealth inequality. Although the ideas here may sound impossible to some, Bregman argues that change begins with an idea--and we must be at the ready when we can no longer sustain our hyperproduction and consumption. In UTOPIA FOR REALISTS, Bregman shows us the most unrealistic economic system is the one we're already living in.

Product Details

About the Author

Rutger Bregman is a journalist at The Correspondent, and one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics. His History of Progress was awarded the Belgian Liberales prize for best nonfiction book of 2013, and Bregman has twice been nominated for the European Press Prize.

Table of Contents

1 The Return of Utopia 1

2 Why We Should Give Free Money to Everyone 25

3 The End of Poverty 51

4 The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill 77

5 New Figures for a New Era 101

6 A Fifteen-Hour Workweek 127

7 Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a Banker 153

8 Race Against the Machine 177

9 Beyond the Gates of the Land of Plenty 203

10 How Ideas Change the World 233

Epilogue 253

Notes 265

Index 307

Acknowledgements 315

What People are Saying About This

Brian Eno

"Rutger Bregman is part of a new generation of thinkers who are suggesting exciting alternatives to the orthodoxies of the last forty years. In this surprising, accessible, and often counterintuitive book, Bregman explores some brilliant but simple ideas for making a better world."

"This book is brilliant. Everyone should read it. Bregman shows us we've been looking at the world inside out. Turned right way out, we suddenly see fundamentally new ways forward. If we can get enough people to read this book, the world will start to become a better place."

co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network - Philippe van Parijs

"Learning from history and from up-to-date social science can shatter crippling illusions. It can turn allegedly utopian proposals into plain common sense. It can enable us to face the future with unprecedented enthusiasm. To see how, read this superbly written, upbeat, insightful book."

author of The Vertigo Years and A Wicked Company - Philipp Blom

"Utopia for Realists is an important book, a wonderfully readable breath of fresh air, a window thrown open to a better future. As politicians and economists are asking how to increase productivity, ensure full employment, and downsize government, Bregman asks: What actually makes life worth living and how can we get here? He combines deep research with wit, challenging us to think anew about how we want to live and who we want to be. Required reading."

Editorial Reviews

01/30/2017A universal basic income, a shrunken work week, and global open borders get endorsements from Bregman, a Dutch journalist and historian. He engagingly examines basic income schemes in 18th- and 19th- century England, in Manitoba in the early 1970s, and among the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. His summary of how close the United States came to passing a basic income law under President Nixon is entertaining and intriguing. “For the first time in history we are rich enough to finance a sizable basic income,” Bregman proclaims. The other legs of his triangle are explored with a little less focus and heft, with references to futurists’ estimates that the typical work week will be 15 hours by 2030 and that increased movement in the global labor market would have dramatic effects on world economic output. For readers on the left, these are appealing notions, presented here in a breezy, TED talk–like style. Bregman isn’t being glib when he says those who want to change the world need to be as “unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible” as abolitionists, suffragists, and marriage equality activists once seemed to be. A more practical handbook, however, is required to make these far-reaching proposals seem achievable. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-12-27A spirited and practical manifesto for improving the odds of making a heaven on Earth.Dutch journalist and economist Bregman opens with an ennobling proposition. "In the past," he writes, simply, "everything was worse." Then, a couple of hundred years ago, something happened: technological innovations allowed wealth and social welfare to spread, such that "a homeless person receiving public assistance today has more to spend than the average Dutch person in 1950, and four times more than people in Holland's Golden Age." Utopia, or nearly so—at least from the point of view of someone born as recently as in the times of Georgian England. So what happened? Well, there's predatory capitalism, the rise of a social order that encourages us not to care about others, and, perhaps worst of all, the advent of a supermechanized age in which "advancing technologies are laying waste to ever more jobs." What to do? Counsels Bregman in a spry, engaging argument, if we can't smash the machines—and that would be a start—then we can certainly try to stay a step ahead of them, for education will play an important role in the near-future economy "as long as machines can't go to college." Meanwhile, in the interest of political stability, if nothing else, the advanced nations might take a more proactive approach in sharing the wealth, not just within their own borders, but everywhere. Then there's perhaps the most utopian ideal of all, the idea that when we choose to work, we ought to be working at something that we find important and with intrinsic value—that, and, well, monkey-wrenching the system, and all with an eye to living more satisfying and healthy lives, the pronounced goal of a whole library of self-help books. Raise the minimum wage? No. Give everyone a basic income, smash the machines, and work a couple of days per week—that's the ticket. A provocative pleasure to contemplate.

Kirkus Reviews

"Both a fun read and a breath of fresh air to anyone who lived through the ghastly experience of last year's presidential election season . . . Utopia for Realists argues, with humor and sympathy, that we've all suffered from forgetting how to dream of a better world....What's so interesting about modern America is our hostility to the mere idea of trying to create an easier and happier life. We're a country that was once rich with social experimentation . . . Now we don't really even try, and mostly just scream at each other on the Internet. That doesn't seem like it will get us there. Maybe free money and a three-hour workday won't, either, but it sure seems like it would be more fun to try." Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

"Convincing . . . Entertaining and reasoned . . . Bregman's book makes for enjoyable reading,and it is packed with colorful factual asides . . . Utopia for Realists should make for good conversation at the next dinner party."Benjamin Cunningham, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Provocative and ambitious...The book is lively, well-researched, and full of unlikely pieces of history."Tim Harford, Financial Times

"Utopia for Realists is fantastic. A quick glance turned into hours of riveting reading. Very seldom does a book change the way you think about some of most intractable problems of society, and of life. This one did. Read this book."Sydney Finkelstein, director of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent

"If you're bored with hackneyed debates and decades-old right-wing and left-wing clichés, you may enjoy the bold thinking, fresh ideas, lively prose, and evidence-based arguments in Utopia for Realists."Steven Pinker, New York Times bestselling author of The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of Our Nature

"Bregman speaks with impressive authority . . . His solutions are quite simple and staunchly set against current trends . . . He has assembled a wealth of empirical evidence to make his case. Better than that, though, Utopia for Realists is not a dry, statistical analysis-although he doesn't shy from solid data-but a book written with verve, wit, and imagination. The effect is charmingly persuasive, even when you can't quite believe what you're reading . . . Listen out for Rutger Bregman. He has a big future shaping the future."Andrew Anthony, The Guardian UK

"Rutger Bregman is part of a new generation of thinkers who are suggesting exciting alternatives to the orthodoxies of the last forty years. In this surprising, accessible, and often counterintuitive book, Bregman explores some brilliant but simple ideas for making a better world."Brian Eno

"A spirited and practical manifesto for improving the odds of making a heaven on Earth." Kirkus

"This book is brilliant. Everyone should read it. Bregman shows us we've been looking at the world inside out. Turned right way out, we suddenly see fundamentally new ways forward. If we can get enough people to read this book, the world will start to become a better place."

"Learning from history and from up-to-date social science can shatter crippling illusions. It can turn allegedly utopian proposals into plain common sense. It can enable us to face the future with unprecedented enthusiasm. To see how, read this superbly written, upbeat, insightful book."

Philippe van Parijs, co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network

"This is a Read Now book. Nothing dystopian about this one: a young (he's 29), practical set of ideas for how the next generation can do better."Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

"An important book, a wonderfully readable breath of fresh air, a window thrown open to a better future. As politicians and economists are asking how to increase productivity, ensure full employment, and downsize government, Bregman asks: What actually makes life worth living and how can we get there? He combines deep research with wit, challenging us to think anew about how we want to live and who we want to be. Required reading."

Philipp Blom, author of The Vertigo Years and A Wicked Company

''It's a wonderful,well-written book, easily the crispest and least dry explanation of the research and history behind basic income as an idea I've seen in print."Dylan Matthews, Vox